Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relates to an information processing apparatus capable of operating in a direct wireless communication mode.
Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals such as smartphones and tablet personal computers (PC) have wireless communication functions. As usage of the wireless communication function, for example, the function is used for transmitting a photograph or a document stored in a mobile terminal to a printer by wireless communication and printing it by the printer.
When the mobile terminal executes wireless communication with an information processing apparatus such as a printer, the mobile terminal needs to connect to an access point to establish the wireless communication. As a method for establishing the wireless communication, a handover method using near field communication (NFC) is known (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-157736). A handover is a method for obtaining connection information (for example, a service set identifier (SSID) of an access point) necessary for executing the wireless communication from an NFC tag using proximity wireless communication such as the NFC and establishing the wireless communication based on the obtained connection information. By the handover, a user can establish wireless communication between a mobile terminal and an information processing apparatus, such as a printer, by simply touching (bringing) the mobile terminal to the information processing apparatus.
On the other hand, the information processing apparatus can operate in a direct wireless communication mode in which the information processing apparatus itself acts as an access point. When operating in, for example, an access point mode as the direct wireless communication mode, the information processing apparatus generates an SSID for allowing the mobile terminal to connect to and acts as the access point having the generated SSID. The SSID generated in the access point mode is written into the NFC tag, and thus, the above-described handover can be realized without separately preparing an access point different from the information processing apparatus and the mobile terminal.
When the handover using the NFC is performed, it is desirable that necessary information is already written into the NFC tag when a user brings the mobile terminal close to the information processing apparatus.
However, in the case of a conventional information processing apparatus, in order to operate the information processing apparatus in the direct wireless communication mode, a user is required to issue an instruction to the information processing apparatus to operate in the direct wireless communication mode. Therefore, according to the conventional information processing apparatus, the information processing apparatus does not operate in the direct wireless communication mode at a timing when a user touches the information processing apparatus with the mobile terminal, and the SSID to be written into the NFC tag is not generated yet. It is inconvenient for a user since the user needs to first issue an instruction to the information processing apparatus to operate in the direct wireless communication mode, and then to touch the mobile terminal to the information processing apparatus.